Adviser was 'not in danger’

Press, 1 October 1983, Page 8

Adviser was 'not in danger’

NZPA staff correspondent Hong Kong The knife-wielding Thai villager who attacked and killed two men accompanying a New Zealand aid survey party on Wednesday, had gone “quite crazy,” a New Zealand adviser, Mr Brian Worboys, told NZPA from Khon, the regional capital of Chaiyaphum province. , “But I didn’t feel that I was personally in any danger,” said Mr Worboys, who is on his second tour as an adviser to a New Zealand aid project, aimed at developing water resources' for villagers in the north-east-ern province. Mr Worboys had been inspecting sites with the local village headman and two local officials at Phu Khieu for a small-scale farm-sized irrigation project to serve the needs of one village. “The site we were looking at was on native forest reserves which had squatters living on part of it,” he said. Mr Worboys said the project had been under consideration by the village council for three or four years and was approved by the 99 per cent of villagers who stood to benefit. “But when we were inspecting the site a very

irate squattdr came up who had one of the long knives they use for working round here, and attacked the village headman.” The headman later died, as did one of the local officials who tried to stop the squatter’s attack. “He was badly wounded in the attack,” said Mr Worboys. “The village where we were was a long way into the bush and when we got him to the nearest hospital they ' were not really equipped to deal with it.”

The official was put in an ambulance to be taken to a larger hospital but “did not last the journey,” said Mr Worboys. Mr Worboys emphasised that the squatter’s anger did not appear to have been directed at himself or the aid project. It was his understanding that there had been long standing enmity between the villagers and the squatters. “There are traditional G* lems r associated with tenure in these Thai villages,” said Mr Worboys. The' attack was just one of the “risks of working in a developing area,” he said. “It seems such an isolated incident in the context of our work here.”

The squatter is believed to have fled.-